The Secret History of Movies #15

(The Wicker Man, 1973, d. Robin Hardy)

(Real Life, 1979, d. Albert Brooks)

RIP Robin Hardy.

Hoffman

Late in his wonderful remembrance of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who passed away on February 2, Tom Carson writes “This one really hurts, people” and yes, it really does. Hoffman was my favorite actor. Along with many others, I first noticed him in Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman. He sort of plays the villain, though he’s one who exists only on a plot level. It’s not a big role, but I remember him, and what he did with the part, better than I do a lot of that movie. Over the next several years, he would turn up in a variety of independent films, both large and small, playing the mournful widower in Todd Louiso’s Love Liza, for instance, and the extravagantly self-destructive gambler in Richard Kwietniowski’s Owning Mahowny, and it was in the course of this stretch, which ran from the mid-90s to the early 2000s, that Hoffman forged the defining creative relationship of his life and career. In 1996, Hoffman appeared in a small part, just one scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight. Even though Hoffman was nowhere close to a big name at this point, his semi-breakthrough work in Todd Solondz’s Happiness and as the officiously good-natured Brant in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski still on the horizon, this somehow feels like a star cameo, his performance as a cocky and subtly naïve gambler who taunts Philip Baker Hall’s old-school big-timer so energetic and believably ridiculous that it would have been difficult, at that time, not to realize there would be much more from Hoffman to come. A guy doesn’t walk on screen for a few minutes, blow it up like that, and then just disappear.

I'm jumbling the timeline a little bit here, but the importance of Hard Eight cannot be underestimated. It was the first of five movies Hoffman would make with Anderson, comprising one of the great, if painfully short, actor/director collaborations of modern times. Great actors can have a narrow range, or they can have sprawling range – Hoffman had an exhilaratingly sprawling range that is on almost complete display even if you focus only on the five films he made with Anderson. After Hard Eight, you get Boogie Nights, in which Hoffman plays Scotty J, the excruciatingly bewildered boom mic operator, as free of the cockiness of his character in Hard Eight as it is conceivably possible to be, who is in love with porn star Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg). Another small role, Hoffman's Scotty J is nevertheless very much a part of Boogie Night's great splash of color, specificity, and what you might have to describe as heartbreaking nonsense. How Scotty J fell into the world the porn, I couldn't tell you, but Anderson and Hoffman knew enough about him to, for instance, at the end of Diggler's big poolside blow-out with Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), linger on him, on Scotty, standing back frightened and nervous because something was terribly wrong with the man he loved. Hoffman stands there, one hand holding his other arm at the elbow, helpless, and somehow the whole film is illustrated by Scotty's ill-fitting tank-top and slack mouth.

And that slack-mouthed look...listen, you start writing about someone like Hoffman, someone who's now gone, and what they could do with so little, things that perhaps you were only vaguely conscious of before, the talent begins to clarify, at least somewhat, and maybe you begin to digress a bit. But that slack-mouthed look was, I can now see, something of a Hoffman trademark -- an impersonation of him might begin there. But what's remarkable is how many different things Hoffman could do with that same dead-muscle expression. In Boogie Nights, he used it to express a nervous kind of blankness. In his next film with Anderson, 1999's Magnolia, we get it again, but it means something else. In the film Hoffman plays Phil Parma, a nurse caring for a dying TV producer named Early Partridge (Jason Robards). As the film goes along, its dozen or so characters criss-crossing through each other's lives, Parma learns that Partridge's son is Frank Mackey (Tom Cruise), a misogynistic guru of seduce and destroy dating techniques whose commercials are all over television. So Anderson shows us Parma watching TV, looking for any way at all to contact Frank,, and Hoffman is there, Parma is there, slack-mouthed again. But now it's because, well, he's flipping through the channels, and how bright do you look when you're doing that. At the same time, though, he's focused. He's on a mission. This isn't the hanging jaw of a dullard, but of a man who has something important to do, a limited time to do it, and flipping channels is step one.

If I may continue to connect the question of range with this slackness of Hoffman's by expanding outward into other films -- and I'll get back to Anderson -- let me begin by saying that in my experience with Hoffman's work you could very creditably argue that he never played the same part twice. Even if you said, well, the hopelessness of Wilson in Love Liza isn't, in some fundamental way, terribly far removed from Caden in Synecdoche, New York, it's impossible not to acknowledge that Hoffman was able to play not just the character, but the whole world of the film in which that character lives. Therefore his work in the environment of Love Liza's modest realism can't resemble the morbid phantasmagoric sweep of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, because Hoffman plays that morbid phantasmagoric sweep as well. And in Synecdoche, New York, to get back to business, Hoffman turns the slack-mouthed look into what's almost a life choice for Caden Cotard, the death-obsessed ("Harold Pinter died. No wait, he won the Nobel Prize"), frustrated, self-hating playwright he plays over a span of about 40 years, but also maybe just several months. Hoffman shambles through the film open-mouthed, in this instance because, perhaps, his brain is too busy telling him that everything is going to go wrong and everything is going to kill him to remember to always communicate even basic muscle control.

And Hoffman has to juggle that whole crazy movie. It’s a tough thing, that one, because the absurdity of houses that are perpetually on fire and diaries left behind by a four-year-old daughter that nevertheless, somehow, continue to chronicle her growth into adulthood has to knock down our defenses so that the damn thing can actually be moving, and if Hoffman isn’t the one to knock them down, who’s going to do it? Caden is a man grinded into dust, or near enough, by the nonsensical tortures of his own stupid brain, and Hoffman lets that pain, grief, and frustration pour out. Even when he’s happy, as he briefly is sometimes, such as in a scene where he’s flirting, badly but successfully, with Samantha Morton’s character, Hoffman plays it in a way that indicates clearly Caden’s belief that this can’t be real, this is a trick, I’ll go along with it though because what else do I have? And see, too, Hoffman’s performance as Allen, the obscene phone caller in Todd Solondz’s Happiness, another one of Hoffman’s big breakthroughs, and another character who wears his slack-jaw the way others might wear a certain kind of hat – thoughtlessly, habitually, but as a clear indicator of personality. Like Caden, Allen is angry, a victim of his own mind; unlike Caden, he’s possibly dangerous, in any case creepy, and Hoffman is almost shocking in the way he portrays how terrifying a lonely person can be. Hoffman does the grubbiest things in Happiness as if he was making toast, these things have taken on that level of the ordinary in his life, and here his mouth hangs open because that’s how he breathes – Hoffman lets his face droop here as if from underuse, and this atrophy both thickens and softens his speech. Caden can speak clearly, but at least Allen always has a goal in sight, however temporary.

So where do I stop, exactly? Hoffman would make two more films with Anderson. In 2002 Hoffman gave a very funny turn as the villain in Punch-Drunk Love, and finally, in 2012, he would appear in The Master, a film I think is as much Hoffman’s (and Joaquin Phoenix’s) masterpiece as Anderson’s, and possibly Hoffman’s last great performance (I would be happy and not at all shocked to hear from those who have seen Anton Corbijn’s upcoming A Most Wanted Man, in which Hoffman stars, that I’m wrong about that). With The Master Hoffman and Anderson’s creative relationship reaches its summit. Hoffman plays Lancaster Dodd, a sort of L. Ron Hubbard figure, who is therefore not one of the ordinary man into which category so many of Hoffman’s characters have been slotted, from Happiness’s Allen to Magnolia’s Phil. Dodd is big, he’s booming, his charisma is outsized, his intelligence seems, if anything, larger, he’s not shy or bad with people. Hoffman easily (maybe not, but it seems that way) sheds his history of playing guys who, whatever sort they might be and however crazy the film in which they appear, one might easily meet at any time, and he fills the screen as a Great Man, or rather a “Great Man.” Yet throughout Hoffman plays the underlying cowardly and uncertain nerves that when struck bring outbursts of anger which sometimes seem tinged with a kind of hidden, pulsing illness (“Pigfuck!”). It’s astonishing work. And then there’s Capote, the film for which Hoffman won an Oscar, and Doubt, a film I think is often unfairly dismissed as Oscar-bait, and in which Hoffman is never less than riveting and subtly mysterious.

But the performance I think should probably close on is the one he gave in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, from 2007. It’s an imperfect film, but a good one, and a final triumph for director Sidney Lumet, who would die four years later at the forgivable age of 86. In the film, Hoffman plays Andy, a seemingly secure and well-to-do businessman, but who is in fact a kind of panicky Satan, one who commits, and convinces others to commit, terrible deeds, and existing behind a mask of confidence and smarm to hide the fact that his life is in tatters. Though perhaps not technically the film’s lead, Hoffman is, nevertheless, actually the lead, since Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is about how Andy destroys his whole world. I bring up this film not to draw unseemly parallels, but it’s true, and Hoffman doubtlessly knew it was true when he made it, that this is a drug movie that only pretends that drugs function here as a plot mechanism. But no, underneath everything, it’s almost all drugs, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, never a “fun” picture, has suddenly become much more uncomfortable to watch than it was before.

And so what? How long will that matter to any of us? Not long, not for me, anyway. What springs to mind even now, and always before, when I’ve thought of the film is a scene between Hoffman and Marisa Tomei, who plays his wife, as they drive home from his dad’s (Albert Finney) house. The father-son thing in this movie is pretty fraught, and for all sorts of reasons Andy breaks down. The dialogue here does Hoffman no favors, but Hoffman gives it a big helping hand anyway, and as the breakdown turns into a mania of grief and frustration, he does something, and it doesn’t last long, but something that anybody who has ever really broken down, for whatever reason, whatever kind of grief has overwhelmed them, will recognize. It’s hard to describe precisely, but essentially what happens is the actor goes away, Hoffman’s gone for a few seconds, and Andy loses control. His voice, his hands, they become untethered, just for a bit. This is the kind of acting that makes you want to point and say “Yes, that’s right.”

This is the sort of thing Hoffman did, is what I’m getting at. He was a very specific performer who could do seemingly anything, whose habits as an actor could mean something new every time. And now – and this has been surprisingly easy to forget as I write about his work – he’s gone. And again, this one hurts. Always, for somebody, when a favorite artist dies, it will feel like more of a personal blow than it does for other people, and I suppose that’s the case for me and the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, but I’m wary of making too much out of that. I didn’t actually know him, I never actually met him, and so on. The connection a person can feel with an artist is often nebulous and hard to define. He was a character actor who looked like a character actor, and this can sometimes be enough to make it personal. This isn’t, in any case, about me, even though funerals are about the bereaved, not the deceased. And on top of that, this isn’t a funeral. Yes, he was too young, and yes, the circumstances of his death are too goddamn sad. If I had or had ever had any ambitions to be an actor this would probably be easier to explain. But perhaps it’s not so complicated. I love movies, I love great acting, and when Hoffman came along, as sometimes happens, the question had to be asked “Who is this guy? Where did he come from?” He was a great actor. That’s enough of a loss. He was my favorite.

RIP Ray Bradbury

He had never liked October.  Ever since he first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees.  It had made him cry, without a reason.  And a little of that sadness returned each year to him.  It always went away with spring.

But it was different tonight.  There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.

There would be no spring.

- Ray Bradbury, "The October Game"

RIP James Arness

Lumet

. Sidney Lumet, who died yesterday at the age of 86, was and is a very important filmmaker to me. Along with Hitchcock, Kurosawa and, of course, Spielberg, Lumet was one of the first directors I knew by name. Roughly speaking, it began with my dad's appreciation (I won't say love, because I don't remember the film coming up all that often) of 12 Angry Men, which was rented on day, and watched by many in my family, and at a fairly young age I was held in that film's grip, and shocked that I was, because 12 Angry Men is black and white and nobody shoots anybody else, and it's all just twelve guys in a room arguing. It has just now occurred to me that this was at the very least an early indicator of my love of dialogue as a part of writing, as a form in and of itself.

My dad carried the torch for Lumet still further -- though since he didn't care about filmmaking, as such, I doubt my dad knew Lumet, though he liked several of his films -- by introducing his sons to Dog Day Afternoon. Primarily, the interest for him was that he knew at least one of the FBI agents involved in the actual case, but also how right the film got it, how deeply it understood not just the bank robbers played by Al Pacino and John Cazale, but also the cops, represented primarily by Charles Durning, and how this situation, a bank robbery turned hostage situation, was completely new -- there was no book to go by. Dog Day Afternoon amazed me then and amazes me still (12 Angry Men less so, because even though I still love it, it's clear that too many of Henry Fonda's arguments are complete nonsense; he'd argue for acquittal if the accused's story was anything short of "I was framed by Sasquatch"). It's relentlessly suspenseful and entertaining, and deeply human, but never easy. However you might want to Monday-morning-quarterback it, Durning's Sgt. Moretti is working his ass off to save those hostages.

Lumet made films about the law his whole career. Quite often his film's were set within the world of law enforcement and courtrooms. Lumet knew precincts and judges' chambers better than anybody. Even lesser films like Find Me Guilty take on an authenticity amidst the goofiness any time Ron Silver's judge opens his mouth, or retires to chambers. It was Lumet's drive in these films to find justice within the mess of the judicial system, to find its reason for being still intact somewhere. As a result, he regularly made films about corruption, most famously in Serpico, but also Prince of the City, Night Falls on Manhattan, and the deeply underrated Q&A from 1990, a wild, violent story of morality that features one of Nick Nolte's best performances. Even 12 Angry Men is about corruption, in the sense that an ostensibly fair system can be unconsciouly thwarted by the individuals who've been tasked to carry out the job.

As with any prolific and long-lasting professional filmmaking career, Lumet's was one of peaks and valleys. One of his best films, The Verdict, manages to simultaneously be grim, even unforgiving, and crowd-pleasing, but look at the films that bookend it: Deathtrap, Prince of the City, Just Tell Me What You Want on one side, Daniel, Garbo Talks and Power on the other. This is by no means intended as a comment on quality, but taking into account how is success gets defined in terms reputation, fairly or unfairly, Lumet had a number of dry spells. His last film, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, was considered something of a, you know, enormous comeback for him, and a surprising one. I've been following Lumet's career as long as I've been able, and even I was surprised by that one. Flawed as I find it, I, for whatever reason, did not expect a film that was, by turns, that blunt and elegantly nasty from Lumet, not by then. I'm ashamed to admit now that post-Verdict Lumet felt less to me like Q&A and more like Guilty as Sin.

But Lumet's the kind of director that gets taken for granted. The credit for Network is given entirely to Paddy Chayefsky, for instance, The Verdict is a movie that Paul Newman should have won an Oscar for, and Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico are, for too many people, Al Pacino films. Yet Lumet had an astonishly rich and varied career. He made Long Day's Journey into Night and The Wiz, for Christ's sake, and if one actor should be held up as Lumet's guy, it's not Pacino, with whom he only made two films, but Sean Connery, with whom he made five, films which, at their best, not only represented interesting shifts for Lumet, ramshackle and stylized as they are, but Connery as well (did Connery ever again, or before, play a role quite like Det. Johnson in The Offence?). Sidney Lumet was a professional filmmaker, it was his job, and he was great at it. As Michael Gough's recent passing snipped another thread to the past, so does Lumet's. The pros are all dying.

Don't Get Around Much Anymore

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Oh, I'm just joking! Sure I get around! I get around plenty! It's just that with the Christmas and the New Year -- happy New Year, by the way -- I haven't been on-line too much. I've left at least one post hanging as a draft, but otherwise I haven't actually watched all that many new films, or even old films, about which I could write. Okay, I did see The Kids Are All Right, and I liked it too much to be able to use my pre-planned joke (something about my reaction to it being right there in the title), but not enough to think about too long afterwards. And I saw the Disney animation documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty, which was equal parts fascinating -- Roy Disney, I know you've since passed on yourself, but you were a dick at Frank Wells's memorial service -- and frustrating, in the latter case mostly because of the way it was made, and the related fact that it relied heavily on narration. Also, though, I appreciated the mini-tribute to Howard Ashman embedded within the film, because that guy was a genius.

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But not much else to talk about right now, I'm afraid. This is just a post to let you all know I'm still here, and the blog-wheels should begin turning again at full speed pretty soon. And anyway, today we lost Anne Francis and Pete Postlethwaite. A moment of silence is in order.

1930 -2011

1946 - 2011

Salinger

Of all the stories by J. D. Salinger that The New Yorker has just made available on-line, in honor of his passing, I recommend "The Laughing Man" most highly, but why not dig around a little bit more, if you're unfamiliar with his work. That might not include very many of you, but who knows? I didn't start reading him myself until a few years ago, due to a long-held prejudice against any literature that was believed, by teachers and peers, to appeal to teenagers. I finally pulled Nine Stories off the shelf one day, with the attitude that, well, it was about time, wasn't it? Considerably past that point, as it turned out, or, then again, maybe not. It's possible I wouldn't have loved that book, or The Catcher in the Rye (which has -- and I know how lame this probably sounds to anyone who hasn't read the book, but trust me -- the most heartbreaking use of the word "fuck" I have ever encountered), quite as much if I'd first read them when I was "supposed to". But Lord, did I indeed love them. They're pretty goddamn good, as Holden Caulfield might say.

My own favorite story from Nine Stories is "Down at the Dinghy". In a brief introduction to their free on-line selection of his work, The New Yorker promises there will be "more to come", so if you don't have a copy of Nine Stories handy, maybe if you're patient The New Yorker will come through on that one, too. If they don't, go to the bookstore.

RIP Jean Simmons

RIP Robert B. Parker

It wasn't until last year that I started reading Robert B. Parker, who died yesterday, and was best known for his longer series of detective novels about Boston investigator, Spenser. As a result, I have very little that I can profitably add to what will no doubt be a flood of eulogies from people more equipped than I. But I will say this: after only two novels, his first Spenser book, and his much more recent Western novel Appaloosa, I can tell that the man was a professional storyteller. That is something that I mean as very high praise.

For God's sake, the man died at his writing desk. The same thing supposedly happened to Tom Reamy, but in that case I'm not sure if the story is apocryphal, or on the level. In Parker's case, it appears to be on the level. Figures.

RIP Edward Woodward

Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!

Hughes

It would be a lie to claim that the films of John Hughes meant a great deal to me when I was growing up, and it would also be a lie to say that I even liked all that many of them. But the above image, from one of maybe two Hughes films I genuinely do love (I also really like Uncle Buck), is a real winner, as far as I'm concerned.

I honestly don't give a damn if the ending of Planes, Trains & Automobiles is thought by many to be manipulative, because of course it is. What matters is if that manipulation works, and for me it does. Up to this point, the film has been a pretty damn funny buddy/odd couple comedy, about a couple of guys named Neal and Del (Steve Martin and John Candy) plowing through a series of bad breaks in order to get home in time for Thanksgiving with their families. The journey has also been fairly uncomfortable -- due in large part to the brilliant work by Martin and Candy -- because Neal has found it increasingly difficult to mask his annoyance, and even dislike, for Del. But, as with most such movies, the two find friendship, and so on, but then we learn the truth about Del, which is that his wife, about whom he's spoken very lovingly throughout the film, passed away some years ago. Neal invites Del to share Thanksgiving with his family, which leads us to the above image.
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Nobody reading this is going to be shocked by this news, but here it is anyway: if you've ever had an emotional reaction while watching a film, and that emotion matches the intent of the filmmaker, you've been manipulated. Which doesn't mean the filmmaker's intent wasn't sincere, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles has always struck me as absolutely genuine. It has a heart, and it earns that ending, where we discover that the movie finally ends up being about a guy who is socially very awkward, and finds it very difficult to make friends. He had one great friend, a situation he believes he lucked into, and now she's gone, and he's back to screwing things up by trying too hard. And look at John Candy's face in the scene where Steve Martin snaps and really lays into him. It's rough the first time you see it, and heartbreaking every time after that. It's great stuff from Candy, but Hughes is the filmmaker here. Extra points for getting there by taking a sharp right turn from the comedy of what Martin is actually saying to him (favorite line from that scene: "How would you like a mouthful of teeth!?").
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Oh, and the movie's hilarious, too. Hughes made comedies, don't you know. You might get a different impression of the guy from reading this post, but that's what he did. And that reminds me of something you should probably know about Neal: Larry Bird doesn't do as much ball-handling in a night as that guy does in an hour.
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Now take this quarter, go downtown, and pay a rat to gnaw that thing off your face.

What Jonathan Said

This Jonathan, that is. I don't imagine that there's going to be a hell of a lot going on anywhere on the the internet today, because in just under two and a half hours, Rick Olson, our resident Scandanavian, is kicking off this months' TOERIFC discussion -- this time it's on Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowning. So everybody go there today, and leave me alone!

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EDIT: Maybe I should save this for its own post, but I just heard that Ron Silver passed away. He was one hell of an actor, and -- I'm not going to lie -- I truly admired his articulate way of presenting what was, in Hollywood, an unpopular political stance, one that I happened to share.

But politics is neither here nor there, especially now. He was a very fine actor, from what I've gathered a good guy, and, in any case, a human being. RIP.

RIP - John Updike

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must point out that I have never been able to finish a John Updike novel. I've tried many times, and each time I came up empty. It's possible that my tastes are simply not compatible with Updike's very thick (as opposed to dense) style, although I doubt it, as I'm a fan of many writers whose writing could be similarly described. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to choose the occasion of his passing to try and figure it out.

Because really, my opinion of Updike's fiction doesn't matter. He has made his mark on the vast landscape of American literature -- not just that of the 20th century, but the whole of it. Since I've been aware of him, he -- along with Roth, Bellow, and a few others -- were considered the gold standard, and each of them have achieved immortality. They will be read for centuries, and their humbling prolificacy, particularly Updike's (although lately Roth is really cranking them out himself) showed what it really meant to be a writer, and to live as a writer: in short, for that to be what you are.

Updike's output is truly staggering: 27 novels, 13 collections of short fiction, 9 collections of poetry, 10 collections of essays, and 1 play. He won two Pulitzer prizes, for Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, and was perversely denied the Nobel Prize, I guess so the committee could squeeze in Dario Fo and Elfriede Jelinek. His last (or most recent, at least; who knows how many unpublished books are on their way) novel is The Widows of Eastwick, a sequel to his famous The Witches of Eastwick. That was published last year. His last (or most recent) collection of stories is slated for this year, and is called My Father's Tears and Other Stories.

As someone who does not count himself among Updike's legion of fans (which is not necessarily the same as "admirers", among whose number I do count myself), I can say without hesitation that Updike was unquestionably a giant of American fiction.

RIP.

RIP - Donald E. Westlake

What a lousy way to start the year.

Donald E. Westlake, who was, to my mind, the greatest crime writer this country ever produced, died Wednesday at the age of 75. That's not such a bad age at which to go out, but I honestly thought he was at least ten years older than that, due to the fact that he was so incredibly prolific. He wrote something like one hundred books, and had shown no signs of stopping. In the last few years, he had revived his series of novels about Parker (written under the pseudonym "Richard Stark"), and this year has another non-Parker novel, Get Real scheduled for release.

I find it difficult, sometimes, to describe what it is I like so much about a given writer, and the work of someone like Westlake is the hardest for me to dissect. At his best, his writing was completely unadorned, and there are those who mistakenly believe that such writing indicates that the author is incapable of writing any other way. This may be true of someone like, say, Dan Brown (okay, it absolutely is true of Dan Brown), but read The Da Vinci code side-by-side with The Hunter, Westlake's first Parker novel, and you will quickly see that Brown is flailing, and Westlake is incredibly precise. He stripped his sentences down to achieve a very specific effect. In The Hunter, the prose needed to be as cold, focused and unfeeling as Parker was.

In truth, I've only read around ten of Westlake's books, which is a tiny fraction of his output. My own favorites among those I've read are The Ax, from 1997, and The Hook, from 2000. The Ax is a strange novel about an ordinary man who gets laid off from his job in the paper industry, and devises a plan to get a new job by murdering his competition. I've heard this novel described as a satire, and I can see that, in that its premise is easily bought in that context, but I don't remember it being very funny, which I don't mean as a knock. Meanwhile, The Hook, a play on Strangers on a Train, describes a man who feels he must murder a stranger in order to remove himself from a desperate situation. After he has committed the murder, he's a bit bemused to find that he's not really bothered by what he has done. Westlake was especially great at that: depicting people who thought they were normal, and basically moral, suddenly discovering that they are actually remorseless and cold-blooded.

Unlike many of his talented compatriates, Westlake did enjoy some critical respect -- I remember reading an absolute rave of The Ax in The Washington Post by Michael Dirda. He even had great support from a capital "L" and capital "W" Literary Writer: Booker Prize-winning Irish writer John Banville is a huge fan of Westlake's (he's Martin Amis to Westlake's Elmore Leonard), calling his Parker novels "among the most poised and polished fictions of their time and, in fact, of any time." A friend of mine saw Banville speak once, and he told me that Banville talked about the thrill he felt when he was finally able to meet Westlake. I can imagine how he must have felt. For more from Banville on Westlake, click here.

Just so you know, Westlake, like a lot of genre writers who got started int he plup era, didn't stop at dark crime stories. He wrote adventure novels (Kahawa, High Adventure), science fiction (Tomorrow's Crimes), comedy (A Likely Story, his Dortmunder series, of which the aforementioned Get Real is apparently the last book), even a bizarre Apocalyptic fantasy (the brilliant Humans). So pick your poison, go on-line, and find something to read by Donald Westlake. He was a great writer. I'm going to miss him.

RIP - Michael Crichton

I just saw the news that Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain and many other novels, has unexpectedly passed away. I say "unexpectedly", but as he died of cancer, and his battle with that evil disease has been described as "private", I have to assume those close to him saw this coming for some time.

I'm not going to do any sort of career overview of Crichton's work, as I haven't read any of his books in a long time (including his recent, controversial books, such as State of Fear, though I'll admit I'd like to). I'm also not going to write one of those weasly, self-serving "Yes, his books were fun, but..." posts that use the death of a famous person as an excuse to tear them down. Because really, take his writing for what it was, or don't, but you can't argue that he was, more than anything, a fiercely intelligent guy. Plus, I'll be damned if Jurassic Park wasn't one hell of a gripping novel.

No, the main point of this post is to inform anyone who doesn't already know, and to express my genuine sadness that Michael Crichton has left us.